Membres du groupe

Current members:

Jérôme Faure received a master in Optics and Optical Engineering from Institut d’Optique Graduate School in 1996. In 1996-1998, he was a research visitor at University of Michigan where he worked the development of femtosecond lasers. He then decided to study the interaction of ultra-intense femtosecond pulses of light with matter and specialized in laser-plasma interaction. He obtained a PhD from Ecole Polytechnique in 2001 and after a 2 year post-doc in Berkeley Lab, he joined the SPL group at LOA as a permanent CNRS researcher in 2003. In the past 10 years, he has pioneered the development of laser-plasma accelerators, i.e. miniature accelerators based on the interaction of a laser with a plasma. At LOA, he has produced some of the first quasi-monoenergetic electron beams using femtosecond laser pulses, showing the potential of the method. His current research interestsinclude the development of high repetition rate electron sources and their application to the study of ultrafast phenomena in matter via ultrafast electron diffraction. Jérôme Faure is also an associate professor at Ecole Polytechnique where he teaches quantum and statistical physics.

Davide Boschetto, Professor at ENSTA

Davide Boschetto studied physics in Italy, at Federico II University of Naples, and in Germany, at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, where he developed a research project on X-ray characterization of high temperature superconductor thin films. He then joined the Ecole Polytechnique to make a PhD at the Laboratory of Applied Optics on femtosecond X-ray diffraction applied to the detection of coherent optical phonon. After his doctorate from the Ecole Polytechnique in March 2004, he joined ENSTA as a teacher and researcher, to further develop applications of ultrafast spectroscopy and ultrafast secondary sources, including X-ray, electron and XUV, to solid-state physics. Between 2009 and 2012 he was a visiting scientist at Columbia University in New York, where he expanded his experimental approach to nanomaterials. Since 2008 he is professor of quantum physics at ENSTA ParisTech, and in February 2013 he became Professor of Ensta ParisTech. His research focuses on the study of ultrafast dynamics in crystals, especially on coherent atomic motion in crystal lattices, namely the coherent optical phonons, and their interactions with electrons in order to discriminate the role of electron-phonon coupling in phase transitions.

He is also very involved in teaching, and always looking for innovation in the pedagogy. In particular, he realized his lectures of Quantum Physics by coupling ELearning with active learning. Please, use the links below to see some example of videos. The first video is a mixture of the most significant parts in using video techniques for his lectures. The last three videos represent a full lecture, expressly divided into three separated parts to maximize the assimilation of the concepts explained in each video.

Aline Vernier graduated from the Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis in 2006 with a Physics Master. Between 2006 and 2010 she was a PhD student at the University of Glasgow (Scotland), where she studied a four-wave mixing process in a hot vapour, and built a cold atoms experiment. Subsequently she worked as a post-doc in Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l’Institut d’Optique where she participated in the design and the construction of a single atom trapping experiment for quantum information processing. In May 2013 she joined APPLI as a research engineer to take part to the development of electron sources from laser-plasma interaction on solid and gaseous targets.

Maxence Thévenet, PhD Student

Maxence Thévenet studied mathematical engineering and computer simulation at ENSTA ParisTech, and graduated in 2013. After an experimental internship in the greek university FORTH about diffraction patterns of a random lattice of microlenses, he completed his training at ENSTA ParisTech with a dual-degree from the Ecole Polytechnique and the Université Paris Sud, in the fields of Optics, Matter and Plasmas. Maxence is now a PhD student in the group APPLI, under the direction of Jérôme Faure, on the topic "Modelling the relativistic interaction between a few-cycle laser pulse and an overdense plasma : from harmonics generation to electrons acceleration."

Dominykas Gustas, PhD student

Dominykas received his bachelor degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), and a dual master degree in Optics and Photonics from Aix-Marseille University (France) and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany). He started his PhD studies in the APPLI group in 2015. Under supervision of Prof. Jérôme Faure, he is currently working on using kHz single-cycle laser pulses for accelerating electron bunches with femtosecond-scale durations to relativistic energies.

Isabel Gonzalez Vallejo, PhD student

Isabel Gonzalez just started her PhD in 2016. Her PhD will be done between LOA and Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, with Dr. David LeBolloch'. In the APPLI group, she will perform ultrafast electron diffraction experiments on various systems, including charge density wave materials.

Neïl Zaïm; PhD student

Neïl graduated in 2016 both from Ecole Centrale Paris, with a major in physics, and from Université Paris-Saclay, with a Master's degree in "Physics of Plasmas and Fusion". He recently joined the APPLI group for a PhD. He is working on computer simulations, in particular in relation to electron acceleration using radially-polarized laser pulses.

Diego Guénot, Post-doc

I studied in Ecole Normale Superieure (Paris) where I received a Master degree in quantum mechanics. From 2010 to 2014 I did my PhD in attosecond physics at the University of Lund (Sweden) under the supervision of Prof. Anne L'Huillier. In 2015, I joined the APPLI group lead by Prof. Jerome Faure to work on electron acceleration at 1kHz repetion rate with single-cycle laser pulses.My research interests are the use of ultrafast laser pulse for the generation of ultrafast probes (either electrons either attosecond XUV pulse) and their application to atomic and solid state physics.

Mariusz Lejman, Post-doc

Mariusz Lejman received his master double diploma in Nanophysics from Le Mans University in France and Silesia University in Poland. After that he continued his PhD at Le Mans University where he studied ferroelectrics by time resolved femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy. His research was mainly focused on the generation and detection of high frequency GHz acoustic phonons by femtosecond laser. The main findings during PhD were efficient generation of GHz shear acoustic phonons in selected crystallographic orientations of ferroelectric material and observation of ultrafast modulation of light polarization when scattered on acoustic phonons in specific experimental geometry.Mariusz currently belongs as a Post-doc to the APPLI group in LOA where he realizes pump-probe experiment on correlated systems in infrared range. He is generally interested in laser-matter interaction and especially in photoinduced ultrafast phenomena in solid state materials and coherent dynamics in correlated systems like ferroelectrics, topological insulators and superconductors.

Associated members and visitors:

Boris Vodungbo, assistant professor Université Pierre et Marie Curie

Boris Vodungbo graduated from Université Pierre et Marie Curie and École Normale Supérieure de Paris with degrees in physics and materials science in 2004. He worked at the Institut des Nanosciences de Paris as a PhD student between 2004 and 2007, elaborating dilute magnetic oxides and studying their structural and magnetic properties for spintronics applications. He obtained a postdoctoral position at the Laboratoire de Chimie Physique – Matière et Rayonnement (LCPMR) to apply resonant spectroscopy techniques to the study of functionalized polymer thin film. Since 2009, he has been working in the field of ultrafast magnetization dynamics mostly using resonant spectroscopy in association with femtosecond soft X-ray sources, first as a postdoctoral fellow at LOA and since 2013 as an assistant professor at LCPMR (UPMC).

Former members:

Henri Vincenti

In 2014, Henri did a one year post-doc in the APPLI group, where he worked on PIC simulations of electron acceleration from solid target. In 2015, he obtained a Pierre & Marie Curie fellowship which allowed him to spend his time between Berkeley National Lab (Jean-Luc Vay's group) and CEA Saclay. He is currently working on new computational methods for massively parrallel calculations.

Geoffrey Gallé

Geoffrey GALLÉ graduated from the université of Bordeaux 1 in the master "laser, matter and nanosciences". He obtained a PhD in ultra-fast molecular spectroscopy on spin crossover compounds at the CPMOH laboratory in 2012. He spent 3 years in the APPLI group where he set up an ultrafast electron diffractometer based on a DC photogun. Since 2016, he has been working in the private sector for SourceLab as an engineer.

Benoit Beaurepaire

Benoit did his PhD on electron acceleration with kHz lasers and applications to ultrafast electron diffraction. He made the first operating kHz laser-plasma accelerators. He graduated in September 2016.